Man Gets Maximum Term for Rape, Stabbing : Violence: The 56-years-to-life sentence reflects the horrifying level of violence in the Anaheim attack, a prosecutor says.

A 19-year-old man received the maximum prison sentence allowable Friday for raping a young woman and stabbing her with a kitchen knife in her house, a block from his own home in Anaheim.

Alejandro Padilla assaulted the 20-year-old Anaheim woman last July, a prosecutor said, after the woman’s husband and two housemates had left for work in the morning.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard L. Weatherspoon sentenced Padilla to 54 years to life in prison for the attack, although Padilla had just one prior conviction, for purse-snatching. Padilla could be paroled after 34 years.

“He got the maximum sentence because the level of violence was just so horrifying,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jo Escobar. Padilla was convicted of attempted murder, robbery, burglary and four violent sex crimes.

Padilla entered the woman’s house through a window and confronted her with a 12-inch knife while she was in bed, Escobar said.

After removing the woman’s jewelry, Escobar said, Padilla made her perform oral sex and sodomized and raped her at knifepoint.

When he had finished assaulting her, Escobar said, Padilla grabbed the woman and said: “Let’s go.” When she asked where, Padilla replied in Spanish, “To hell” and plunged the knife into her abdomen.

The woman collapsed to the floor and feigned death, Escobar said. When Padilla pressed the knife into her hands, apparently to make her wounds appear self-inflicted, he felt a pulse, so he opened one of her eyes and sprayed hair spray into it to make her react.

In an ensuing scuffle, Padilla plunged the knife through the woman’s neck and fled, Escobar said.

Anaheim police identified Padilla because he left fingerprints on a bathtub.

Deputy Public Defender Jim Apple, who represented Padilla, said he believes Padilla should go to prison. “But I don’t believe he deserves to spend the rest of his life there,” Apple said.

Padilla’s older brother, Tony, sadly told the court: “He tried to do his best (in life). . . . We’re very sorry this happened.”